Rosen does a bunch of interviews, and she comes off looking really good. (I thought) Valenti does an interview, and he comes off looking like Satan. Allow me to share a few of the high points with you before you plunge into this link...

] I wasn't opposed to the VCR.

... we just wanted a peice of all the money from it.

] It was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that determined VCRs were
] not infringing, which I regret. As a result, we never got the
] copyright royalty fee, but everything I predicted came true.

Bullshit. Nothing you predicted came true. And I would take to task the $3.5 billion figure he cites for analog piracy. I am will to bet thats based on the number of blank VCR tapes sold, which dosen't mean shit. Not to mention, it assumes that something copied is something not bought, and in turn a complete loss. Their formulas are flawed.

] Now the difference between analog piracy and digital piracy
] is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

He used the "lightning and the lightning bug" line AGAIN! Hasn't someone told him yet that it dosen't even make any sence?

] It now costs about $350,000 to produce a CD; it costs $80
] million to make and market a movie. Big difference.

And DVDs are only slightly more expensive then movies.. But I'm bashing Valenti and the MPAA here, not the RIAA. I digress.

] Right now, any professor can show a complete movie in
] his classroom without paying a dime--that's fair use. What
] is not fair use is making a copy of an encrypted DVD, because
] once you're able to break the encryption, you've undermined
] the encryption itself.

ARGH! This guys must masturbate while looking at a copy of the DMCA.

] But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never
] wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups,
] because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless.

BULLSHIT.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804519345.html

] Today, it's illegal to copy a videocassette. No one has a
] fair use to copy a videocassette. If you lose it, you get
] another one, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's
] what people have been doing for generations.

ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!! I don't even know where to start with this one..

] If you don't have tightly focused, narrowly drawn mandates,
] either regulatory or congressional, then, if I'm a maverick
] computer maker in Taiwan, I can say, "Hell, I'm not going
] to play by the rules. I'm going to do it so everybody can
] copy." Then Toshiba and Sony and IBM can say, "Well if he
] does that, then I want to do it." We always operate on the
] fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph
] speed limit. That's called a standard.

Has he been in a box for the past 10 years? Or maybe someone drives him everywhere? Or he is too busy looking at the DMCA and masturbating to notice that the 55 mph limit is gone.

] At all costs, the government should stay out of censorship,
] except in war.

Jack dosen't want freedom of the press either..

] But in any other arena, I'm totally opposed to censorship
] in any form. I'm a great believer and defender of the
] First Amendment.

You can't have it both ways Jack...

] I think lobbying is really an honest profession.

sigh.

] Known for his sharp rhetorical abilities, Valenti always
] speaks about piracy in calamitous terms, prophesizing the
] eventual death of the movie industry.

These are 'sharp retorical abilities' ?!?

Lightning and the lightning bug? The 55 mph thing? Saying one statement and then pretty much contradicting yourself in the next sentence?

This guys sucks. Really..

Hey, look! Valenti is making himself look like an idiot! (again)

This is funny as hell. I love the closeup of the VCR in the third frame. If Disney did redo the Pirates of the Caribbean ride to have animatronic portrayals of P2P users and overseas DVD duplication labs, I would make the trip to see it. Thats my idea of entertainment.

Link from boingboing.net.

Fox Trot and the War on Technology

] Embrace file-sharing, or die
]
] A record executive and his son make a formal case for
] freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans
] can't be wrong.

Very good. Quick rant time.

This wraps up a number of points made recently by people such as Tim O'Reily, John Perry Barlow, and Prince into a very nice argument targeted at NARAS.

NARAS is a good target for this argument too, IMHO. The artists will get hip before the record companies. The artists' representation is a good group to start to warming up. The RIAA will not swing untill the finical aspects of embrasing all this new technology have been worked out. The RIAA represents a handfull of CEOs. Their constitution is written in black ink, if you catch my drift.

The industry is used to a hundred years of product scarcity, and it is their busines model's foundation. Thats why the album product cycle exists the way it goes. I think "step one" for them is to realise that this "product cycle" is a thing of the past, and the first player who finds a way to do away with it will be an instant industry leader. When the way artists are marketed starts to fall in line with how prolithic that artist is, and not an album release/recoup schedule, consumers will begin to stop hating the record industry.. I theorize that one of the cheif reasons people hate the industry so much is because they feel they act like a gatekeeper between them and the artist, a gatekeeper that they don't want. They want demos. They want outtakes. They want to be connected to the artist. They don't want the industry filtering for them. They want the industry to provide access to what they want, not to tell them what to think.

New technology has empowered the consumer. The comsumer, in its mob-indirect-not-fully-aware-of-its-own-power kinda way, has realised this. They want a change. The record industry thinks its a subscription service, but its a little more then that. The consumer wants a complete revamp in the way artists are marketed and sold. They care about the work of the artist, and if they like that work. And if they do, they want access to as much of it (the artist) as possible. They want the market to be driven by their tastes, not their tastes to be driven by the market. The consumer is kinda pissed off that their culture is driven by a select few who get to pick what gets big. While that may not be entirely accurate, thats what most think, so thats the idea that wins.

Its going to take them awhile to see the writing on the wall, longer to interpret it, and yet longer to start following its instructions. The consumer will keep the fire under their ass growing, and they will figure it out eventually.

Either that, or they will start die one by one. The new system will arise sooner or later, either way. That is the nature of human evolution, its about ideas and technology now.

Salon.com | Embrace file-sharing, or die

Tom the Danging Bug addresses the Eldred decision.

Tom the Dancing Bug -- Welcome to my domain!

] The chain of internet cafes launched by Easyjet founder
] Stelios Haji-Ioannou has been found guilty of copyright
] infringement for allowing its customers
] to download music from the web and copy it on to a CD.
]
] The high court judgment brings to a close an 18-month war
] of words between the major record labels and the
] EasyInternet cafe chain over a promotion in which it
] charged customers £5 to copy a CD's worth of music from
] the internet.
]
] The UK trade group, the British Phonographic Industry,
] with member music labels Sony Music, EMI and Universal
] Music, took the internet chain to court last year,
] charging it with copyright infringement.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | New media | Internet cafe guilty of piracy

LOS ANGELES - Six retail record store chains hurting from competition from CD burning, online music and large discount stores are teaming to offer consumers digital music downloads in their stores and over the Internet.

The stores have formed a joint venture called Echo that will provide technology and allow them to offer individual tracks for downloading to portable devices and computers.

Yahoo! News - Retailers Form Digital Music Venture

] To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and
] the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights
] would be enough. The 14-year term of the original
] 18th-century British and American copyright laws,
] renewable once, might be a good place to start.

The economist presents a radical copyright proposal.

Economist.com | Copyrights

Rosen wants to go after ISPs in the RIAA's ongoing war against technology.

Wired News: RIAA's Rosen Sets Sights on ISPs

] Record labels are under attack from all sides - file
] sharers and performers, even equipment manufacturers and
] good old-fashioned customers - and it's killing them. A
] moment of silence, please.

Wired 11.02: The Year The Music Dies

] Microsoft's new Windows Media Data Session Toolkit allows
] media companies to add a protected "second session" to
] CDs and DVDs for use on PCs. This second session includes
] the audio and video content in Microsoft's Windows Media
] format, plus rules for the use of that content, Microsoft
] said.
]
] For example, content owners can limit the number of times
] a user can play the content on a PC and restrict copying
] of audio and video or transferring of songs to a portable
] device, Microsoft said. The protection is handled through
] Microsoft's Windows Media Digital Rights Management
] technology, Microsoft said.
]
] Microsoft's product announcement comes a week after
] representatives of the recording and technology
] industries, including Microsoft and the Recording
] Industry Association of America, urged the U.S.
] government to keep its hands off of the digital
] copyright protection issue.

Ok, let me make sure I have this straight.. Before, I couldn't play a copy protected CD/DVD in my computer. Now, if Microsoft has its way, I can't play a copy protected CD/DVD in my computer unless I'm running windows.

If this continues to move in this direction, I am simply not going to be able to listen to music _at all_ without obtaining it via illicit means. Its going to be the only option if I want to retain my freedom to use open technology. Either that, or the artists I support will have to work outside the current system.

The chains are both becoming clearly visible and heavy.

New Microsoft Tools to Copy Protect CDs and DVDs Support Their Monopoly